Sunday

July 7th, 2148

Resistance Base

The day had moved past afternoon; it was getting further into evening.

Gray skies and polluted clouds overhead, no bright sunlight to speak of, and Montana looked nothing like Stuart remembered it. Gone was the endless blue canvas overheard in Big Sky Country. Gone were the trees and the lakes. All that once was green and growing was gone. It was a barren land. Was the rest of the country like Montana? Was the rest of the planet?

Matt landed the jumpship outside the Montana base, and several people moved toward them. Obviously, there was business that needed to be attended to. 'Business' in this new world Stuart had woken up in seemed to be done in a purely survivalist mode. He knew Lyman was out to take over the world, but Dread destroyed everything? He hadn't seen that coming.

"Think she's awake?" Scout asked Jon in a low voice. "I really want to talk about some of this data with her."

Jon laughed. "You know Jennifer. She'll have been poring over that other information you gave her and been trying to figure out what happened since we left."

Another voice called from across the landing bay. "Captain Power? A word?"

Stuart watched his son walk over toward the man who called his name. Whoever he was, he was someone of some importance.

Everything was happening fast around him, and Stuart needed to take a moment to catch his breath. Everything was different from anything he knew.

"He's the base administrator," Matt explained as he walked over to Stuart, pointing out the man Jon was speaking with. "His name's Conway. He's the one who established this base about ten years ago. We helped where we could, but things were tough then. Resistance wasn't even a unified force at the time. People were looting, killing, it was anarchy. Conway and others like him were able to create small pockets of civilization to remind people that we're still human, that we could survive and not become animals. It's been a joint effort by a lot of people to even get this far."

Stuart blew out a breath. "Anarchy?"

"Never expected anything like this?"

This? Matt had mentioned they were returning to a hospital at a resistance base, but what Stuart saw when he looked around was much more. It was a refugee camp, a resistance base, a trading post, a school, an orphanage - it was the last vestiges of a devastated civilization trying to rebuild. Stuart shook his head in disgust. "I never dreamed it would get this bad. Lyman did all this?"

"No," Matt explained quickly. He pointed toward the outside, to the wastelands. "Dread did all that. What you see here, people did all this. Survivors who aren't willing to give up. We help out where we can, they help us in the war. We're still fighting."

"I keep hearing about this Dread character. Who is he?"

Matt looked at Stuart like he'd just grown another head. "Stuart, Dread is Taggart. It's the name Taggart uses these days. You didn't know?"

Stuart blew out another breath and shook his head. "No. All I've heard about is Lord Dread and the Machines. I haven't heard the name Taggart since I showed up at Los Alamos. I knew Lyman was power hungry, but this? He's reduced the world to some post-apocalyptic No Man's Land."

"It's more than that," Matt continued. "After the explosion at Volcania, Taggart was hurt pretty badly. Overmind sort of healed him up by making him part machine and part human. He was like that for fifteen years while he perfected the transference technology."

That was a new phrase. "Transference technology? What's that?"

Matt took a deep breath and glanced around at the people milling about. "His big plan? To transfer human minds into metalloid bodies?"

"He's still under that delusion? Why? He has to know that you can't put something alive into something dead like a robot."

"He's done it, Stuart," Matt contradicted him. "The day we lost the Colorado base, he transferred his mind into a metalloid body. He's a biodread now."

A biodread? "Unbelievable," Stuart muttered. "He's taken that technology to a level I never would have considered viable." He glanced around at their location, his eyes taking in every scene. "Are there a lot of bases like this?"

"All over the continent. Some aren't nearly this well-off. Others are almost like small towns. This one has a first-rate hospital and we know the doctor. She's helped us out a lot of times in the past. We don't really know what the conditions are like overseas. We hear rumors that some countries are worse off than we are. Some are rebuilding. Some don't exist anymore."

"They don't exist?" How could Lyman have destroyed land masses?

"Some were bombed into the sea. Some landed areas were stripped of all their resources and then Dread burned whatever was left. The human population is maybe 25% of what it was sixteen years ago."

That much lost? Stuart couldn't imagine that kind of destruction, not yet. But there, in that place, he saw the hope of the human race. People weren't giving up. They were fighting.

More people walked up to the jumpship to speak to the rest of the team. Stuart overheard Tank speaking with the landing bay commander about Intel newcomers were bringing in. Scout was walking over to join him. Jon was still speaking with the administrator, a concerned look in his eyes. Stuart realized that his son and his team truly bore the weight of the world on their shoulders, whether literally or figuratively.

Matt explained what was going on. "I think it'll be a few minutes before we can go into the hospital. Something's going on."

Scout moved back towards Matt and Stuart to update them on the latest Intel. "They've been getting reports that these storms are keeping Dread's forces out of the affected areas so a lot of people in that region of the wastelands are relocating to some safer areas while they've got a safe passage. They're asking any Resistance troops on the West Coast to be on standby in case the refugees need help moving. Administrator's telling the captain the finer details."

Matt motioned toward the ship. "We'll need to restock then. We're running low on stores, and we might as well restock on ammo."

"I'm on it," Scout said as he walked over to the quartermaster's office.

Stuart tried to process everything he was seeing and hearing. This reality was completely different from the one he knew. His son was speaking with other individuals who held the air of authority. He heard names mentioned in the conversations, a few words peppered in here and there. Some resistance leaders were already helping some of the refugees relocate... someone called Freedom Two and Cypher and Dennis T... wait, Dennis T? Could it be? Dennis always did walk his own path and didn't get along with the rest of his family because of it. Dennis always wanted to stay in the background, an obscure footnote to a rather powerful family. He didn't even want to use their surname. Although, given his family, Stuart couldn't blame him. He considered the world that he had been tossed into once again. Was it any wonder that people were so different from what they used to be? War and death and deprivation had stripped people down to their true selves, Dennis included.

"Matt, Dennis T? Is that the Dennis we know?"

Matt nodded his head. "He's leading the Idaho Resistance these days. He keeps a very low profile. He rarely talks to any of us who knew him before including Jon these days. He doesn't want anyone making any connections about who he used to be and who he is today."

Stuart let his attention wander back to his son, a man who was now a stranger to him. "Tell me, given how I'm seeing people act toward Jon, how they speak to him, how pivotal is he in the war against Dread?"

"He's the main reason we still have humans living out here," Matt corrected him. "Dread would have destroyed everyone by now if Jon hadn't stood in his way all these years."

Jon was the immovable object to Lyman's irresistible force. There had to be a very long story leading up to that, one that he'd learn eventually. There was so much he had to know. "So why is Lyman called Dread?"

"Lord Dread," Matt said with a scowl. "I'm not really sure. He started calling himself that after he became half-machine. Thousands of Dread Youth were taught to call him that, even Overmind calls him -"

"Wait, Dread Youth?" That was another term Stuart didn't recognize.

Matt sighed. "Oh, right. There are a lot of things we'll have to catch you up on. Basically, Dread had children raised to be his soldiers. Orphans, sons and daughters of those loyal to him, the ones he could find or take or steal, they were trained to want to place their minds into metal bodies and be Dread's foot soldiers. Most of them aren't even aware that they have a choice. We didn't know how bad it was until we found Jennifer."

"She was one of Dread's soldiers?"

"A youth leader until she saw the truth of it all," Matt told him. "Then she did the one thing no other Dread Youth had ever done. She escaped. We found her and it didn't take us long to realize she was perfect for this team." He nodded his head toward Jon. "Perfect for him, too."

Stuart looked toward his son. The look in Jon's eyes was one Stuart had never seen in the teenager he had been. There was a darker desperation, a subdued anger that seemed to radiate from his eyes. "Tell me about him. What's he like now? I don't even know my own son."

"You'll be proud of him, Stuart. He's done things neither one of us would have imagined him doing. He's taken the power suits and made them do things I don't think you even had on the drawing board. He knows them so well that he re-designed one for Jennifer. Turns out all the suits you designed were a little too big for her to wear."

Stuart smiled. "He figured out the suits," he commented. "I knew he would." He thought that was a good time to change the subject. "I've noticed a few distinct verbal clues since you picked me at Los Alamos. Am I right in saying there's something special between him and this Jennifer?"

Matt smiled. "There can be now that she's alive. It's another long story, Stuart."

It seemed there were a lot of long stories for him to catch up on. "What's the condensed version?"

Matt laughed. "Believe me, there's no way to condense their story. You'll have to hear it all."

"From what I gathered, you thought she was dead and found her the same way you found me?"

"More or less."

Something that Jon said was beginning to make sense to Stuart. "Jon is worried that if we could be brought here from another time, then we could be taken someplace else in time."

Matt frowned, his brow furrowing. "I hadn't thought of that." His eyes tracked toward Jon. "We have to make sure that doesn't happen. I don't think this team would survive his losing her again."

~o~ This Domino Won't Fall ~o~

Saturday

March 23rd, 2357

Jet Propulsion Laboratories

Delphi held the Council's decision in one hand and tapped the fingers of her other hand on the table as she waited for Jillian to appear on the monitor.

Elias was fuming. "What's taking so long?"

"Just wait," Delphi said. "You know she's hurrying." She noticed the disk Elias had in his hand. "What's that?"

"Proof," he told her. "I just want to tell you both together."

Finally, their patience was rewarded when the vid-link connected.

"Sorry," Jillian was out of breath. "I had to get to a secure location, and my lab doesn't have a lot of those. What do we have new?"

Delphi sighed angrily. "The response from the Temporal Administrative Council."

"I just got it, but I haven't had time to read it yet. I take it we don't like their decision?"

Delphi cleared her throat and read the results aloud.

"Temporal Council Decision regarding disposition of Corporal Jennifer Chase, circa 2148. After careful consideration, it has been decided by a four to three vote that Corporal Jennifer Chase should be located as close to transfer date July 4th, 2148, and moved to a temporal/geophysical location beyond the lifespan of the Power Team that will not interfere with newly established history. This correction should be made forthwith, all timelines taken into consideration, via the solid hologram program."

There was silence for a moment, then over that vid-link came some rather angry viewpoints.

"Please don't tell me that says what I know it says. They can't be serious."

"They want to move her," Elias grumbled. "Not a word about Stuart Power, but they want to take her away from Jonathan Power. Move her to some point into the future. I read the minutes of the meeting the Council had. They really have no idea what they're doing."

"There must be something we can do," Delphi mumbled aloud.

"What can we do?" Jillian asked. "The Council is the authority in these matters."

"Plan B," Elias said suddenly.

Delphi turned in her seat to look at her friend. She could sense that Jillian was just as confused as she was. "You've worked out a Plan B?"

"Just now I have," was his self-confident answer. "The solid hologram program! I'd forgotten about that one. I mean, it didn't work before, but it'd work for us now. Add that in with our secondary experiment we did to 2217 - it's perfect! Oh, we also have a problem." He brought out a personnel file. "Doctor William Custer. Do you know him?"

Jillian frowned slightly. "In some respects. He's at the Cyclotron Laboratory. I've seen his name on a lot of the paperwork. Why?"

"It looks like he was the one who originally targeted Stuart Power for death and then preprogrammed the Cyclotron to split the wave fractal when we followed up with a temporal jump to 2132 to also hit 2148," Delphi added.

"Wait, he altered time? That's a serious charge," Jillian cautioned them. "And he duplicated a Brophy Theorem? I didn't know that was possible. Do you have proof or just coincidences?"

"Some sciting odd coincidences if that was all they were, but there's some harder evidence," Elias explained quickly "And I think I just found out why he did all this if he did do all this." He put the disk into the computer and pulled up a file on the monitor so everyone could see it. "I did a personnel background check and employment history on him. The paperwork was way past perfect. Not a single flaw anywhere. I had to go back to the DNA medical databases to confirm it -"

"You broke into the medical database?" Delphi asked. "That could cost you your job and your degree, Elias."

"It's only illegal if I get caught," he protested before Jillian could say anything. "The DNA on file doesn't match the Custer family bloodline which, get this, is only available through George Armstrong Custer's brothers. As far as we know, Custer didn't father any children with his wife Libby. Other children were said to be Custer's offspring. Their mother was a woman named Monahsetah whom he 'unofficially' married, but there's some historical dispute about that. Some historians said Custer was sterile and his brother Thomas may have fathered the children. Who knows. But here's what I found out. His real name isn't William Custer. He's a temporal engineer, he did graduate top of his class but his real name is Byron Micklon."

Both ladies shrugged.

"You wouldn't know the name Micklon. I traced the family back over two hundred years, male and female lines. Tracking it back, it's now Micklon who was descended from a Wiseling who was descended from a Pierman who was descended from a Harrigan who was descended from -"

"We get it, Elias," Delphi said. "It's the begats in reverse. Where does this list start?"

Elias cleared his throat. "It tracks back to a man named Dennis Taggart."

That got their attention.

"Taggart?" Jillian asked. "As in -"

"As in Lyman Taggart. Same family. I looked into the Taggart history starting with Dread himself. Some stories say that Dennis was Lyman Taggart's son and named for his younger brother, but there's no evidence that Lyman fathered any children before or after he joined up with Overmind. We do know that he had a brother named Dennis, and this younger brother disappeared for a while. There's some evidence that he may have been in charge of a small Resistance cell -"

"Wait," Delphi interrupted. "Dennis Taggart? Didn't our tech tell us that about a journal entry from a Resistance leader named Dennis T? Idaho, I think? He wrote something about the Power Team being intact in 2148?"

Elias thought for a moment, then nodded. "Dread's brother a Resistance leader? Bet that made for interesting conversation around the dinner table."

"Only if anyone knew," Jillian added.

Elias continued. "Whether Dennis Taggart was Dennis T... who knows. Right now, it's all speculation. Anyway, Micklon's a direct descendent of a man named Dennis Taggart, and if that's the younger brother, then he's related to Lyman Taggart, Dread himself."

"I wonder what he's up to," Delphi asked. "If he changes history, then all this ceases to exist."

"It gets worse. I looked through the adjacent timeline research that was performed before we took the Cyclotron offline. The Taggart family would be the ruling dynasty for generations in several of them, but the one key event in those timelines was that Stuart Power died early in the Badderdays."

"There's more to all this, isn't there?" Jillian asked.

"Yeah," Elias held up the disk for Jillian to see over the vid. "The information I just told you about is the tip of the iceberg. From the Intel I dug up and what we found on the searches, put it all together and it points to it being Custer who accessed the actual dates of June 14th, 2132, and December 25th, 2147. He's the one who researched the adjacent timelines and figured out which one to jump us to. But this is the part you won't believe - he sent back a time beam that caused Stuart Power's death during our experiments to move an item one day in the year 2217. At the same time, he uploaded a program that would seek out two different moments and mimic a Brophy Theorem and toss us into a sciting panic trying to fix it and not look for how it happened because we'd assume that it was a Brophy." He took a deep breath after that long, run-on sentence. "But here's our big problem. He erased his search so there's no direct evidence linking any of this to him, but he didn't erase the information in the computer buffer. I've got a copy of it, but it's not exactly as complete as we'd need. Basically, it's a big pile of sciting odd coincidences, some guesswork and no hard proof."

"Well, there's some evidence," Delphi added.

"Circumstantial," Jillian reminded them.

Elias shrugged. "Strong circumstantial, but that's it. And look, all we have is supposition. We've got no physical evidence. Yet. We'll have to worry about him after we save history from the Council."

"Wait," Jillian raised a finger as she thought through the information. "This was done during our experiments? Does the buffer show that we also ran a top-secret experiment at the same time and didn't use the Cyclotron? I don't think any of us have written up a report about it because we got caught up in this clusterdreck. Custer might not realize that we were able to send a beam back without the Cyclotron being the power behind it during our secondary experiment."

Elias shook his head. "Nothing in the buffer about it. So we don't know if Custer knows that our little experiment happened or may have been a success."

"That may be our one wild card," Jillian suggested. "Wait, does anyone other than the three of us know we ran that experiment?"

Elias shrugged. "Not as far as I can tell."

With a conspiratorial smile, Delphi said, "Good. We should be able to use that. Jillian, you and I are under orders to get the new temporal coordinates to send Chase to as quickly as we can and report to the Administration building tomorrow."

"Tomorrow? There's no way we can find a suitable place in that amount of time. It'd take -"

"Just pick a place," Elias suggested. "Any place. It won't matter. Just tell the Council something."

Delphi took a deep breath. "I think we should give our suspicions about Custer to the higher-ups at the same time."

"Why?" Elias asked quickly.

"Think tactically. Tracking down someone even thought to have altered the timeline? That'll distract the Council long enough for us to carry out your plan B, and Jillian," she turned back to the monitor, "whatever Elias' rather intriguing idea is for Plan B is and it doesn't look like he's telling, you and I can't be anywhere around when he pulls it off because he's right. It's illegal if we get caught. And I think all three of us want to be above suspicion when it takes effect so no one looks at us as being the ones who did it. Us doing our jobs at our desks is the perfect cover. Besides-"

"Wait a minute," Jillian argued. "We think we may have found a conspirator trying to destroy the world, we have to wait on nailing him and you mean we have to miss being in on one of Elias' shenanigans?"

"Only if you want to keep your jobs if it backfires," Elias suggested.

Jillian grumbled. "But your stunts are so much fun to watch."